A spot in one of those for a family in Berlin costs 650.000€ because of how great the non-communist economy is doing at creating affordable housing. That is 14 times for median salary before taxes, or 21 times after taxes. https://www.immobilienscout24.de/expose/165160850

I've seen this posted before. Important points to consider: Imperial Russia had a housing shortage in the cities due to industrialization occurring and the existing housing was often of poor quality. According to one source: "In major cities, a significant portion of housing consisted of barracks, basements, semi-basements, dormitory-style rooms, dugouts, and semi-dugouts."

Then WW1 hit followed by the civil war and housing construction essentially stopped with some housing destroyed in the war. Then in the interwar period, priority was given to industrial construction in the USSR, resulting in low housing construction volumes, with a significant share consisting of temporary housing. Rapid industrialization and increasing population shifts to cities increasing demand. Then WW2 hit and huge amounts of existing housing were destroyed in the fighting.

So the USSR was in tight spot and did the best they could with limited time and resources which for most Russians ended up being a huge improvement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_construction_in_the_Soviet_Union

Ahh yes, the famous left wing authoritarian centric planning government Soviet Russia

Who could've guessed, low-cost housing doesn't look fancy!

Has anyone seen the cat?

Right wing architecture

I don't see this as left or right wing

This is architecture that could be done better.

Yes, we need to stop homelessness, but you also want to avoid creating spaces where nobody wants to live because it's ugly and depressing and guaranteed, the poor end up having to live there, and with that comes crime and what not and you end up with ghetto style areas where even police is uneasy

Take a little bit more space, put a little bit more thought into the designs, add spaces for children to play, add parks, make it look nice. Wr don't need luxury villas either, but there has to be something better than this

How the hell is this "left wing architecture"?? Apartment buildings have looked like this all around the world for at least 50 years.

This litterally looks like any neighbourhood build in Spain in the 60s.

lists one way of doing a thing "This is the only way of doing that thing!!"

One interesting thing I'm noting is that picture appears to have been taken on a rather dreary winter day. I can see a lot of trees between the buildings, and I'd be interested in seeing what this place looks like in other seasons and better weather

Meanwhile in famously communist South Korea...

Semi relatedly, there's some new blocks in my city that are both ugly and expensive to live in. It's this soulless, almost corporate feeling type of architecture. Doesn't fit into how the city looks at all. They had the opportunity to decide whether to build affordable housing or something pretty that aesthetically fits into the city and picked neither. No doubt the shareholders shed a tear of joy.

Social housing typically doesn't look as good as high-end apartments, but it doesn't have to look terrible. Here's some pretty neat looking social housing in south Paris.

It's kind of the China Town of Paris.

It's right next to an accessible tram station, has green spaces and social areas spread around, a couple of malls with great independent restaurants right next door. There are cycle lanes all around the place.

If you're curious, here it is on Google Maps

I'd live here. I only wish there were more neighbourhoods like this.

Copying and pasting an old comment i made:

Honestly, commieblocks arent that bad. Most of the pictures of them are cherry picked to be the unmaintained, dirty ones, and are exclusively taken in gloomy weather. The houses on the inside are usually good quality as well (though likely not well maintained anymore).

Hell, if you just painted them colourfully, they'd look nice.

Also part of why it looks depressing is because it's old and poorly maintained.

Just a touch of renovation and the houses start looking way better:

The only thing more depressing than left wing architecture is right wing architecture

They're called commieblocks if they're affordable to the average person. If not, they're "highrise apartments"

I live in a city with neighbourhoods built during Socialism, they're spacious, full of greenery and with important services within walkable/bikeable distance. Meanwhile we have new "urban villas", which are drab concrete boxes with apartments that have bizzare floorplans and seem to be built for money laundering purposes.

On the picture: hundreds of flats with individual windows and balcony

Oh no, giving hundreds of families a balcony, how terribile! What's next: non-shared bathrooms and kitchens?

I hate our society's fixation with ugly utilitarianism. We could be making beautiful things for all of us

take notice of your capitalist car park next time you go to big box centre. more depressing than housing

Those blocks might be not perfect, but they were part of a program to build housing for all those people living in quite bad conditions after the war and after everything that went through in eastern europe in the 20th century. They needed millions of homes and quick. And they might be ugly to some people, but they are better than slums and you shouldn't take their condition today after several decades for what they were when they were new.

I actually wish they’d build more of those than the overpriced “luxury condos” people build now that no one can afford.